Australia
pp. 69-70 · Read in the full issue
The Reds Annoy
On Nauru Conditions
ALTHOUGH it would be difficult to find, anywhere in the world, happier in dustrial conditions in an indentured labour community than are to be seen on the phosphate island of Nauru, the repre sentatives of the Communist countries on the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations again launched (on June 29) an attack upon what they called “concen tration camp conditions in Nauru under Australian administration.”
It is a palpable Communist “stunt,” carried on with a view to annoying and embarrassing Australia, Britain and New Zealand (who are jointly responsible for the Nauru Island Trusteeship), and should have been ignored. Instead, Australia has been taking the Red’s criticism quite seriously, and going to great pains to answer the charges.
The Russian delegate, Soldatov, declared that the economic life of Nauru was com pletely subordinated to the British Phos phat Commission’s monopoly, which made tremendous profits, and that con ditions of virtual slavery existed.
The facts are that the huge deposits of phospatic rock on Nauru and Ocean Island (180 miles apart) are worked by the British Phosphate Commission, which is virtually a Government instrumentality; that neither Nauru or Ocean Island natives are employed; that the natives of both islands get a royalty on every ton of phosphate taken away, so that they are
the richest native communities in the Pacific; that the Commission employs, on the two islands, some thousands of Chinese and Gilbertese labourers, on an indenture system which provides for their regular repatriation; and all those labourers are well paid and cared for.
A year ago, when a section of Chinese labpur was being repatriated, there was a riot among Chinese who did not want to leave Nauru, and in the measures taken to restore order four Chinese were killed.
Early this year, some Nauru chiefs com plained of conditions there about which they were perturbed; and the Australian Government took the unusual course of sending the Acting Minister for External Territories to Nauru to investigate.
Altogether, there are only some 1,200 Polynesian-type natives on Nauru, and the Banabans of Ocean Island are an even smaller community. The Australian Ad ministration in Nauru Island always has been most careful to maintain good and just relations between the BPC organisa tion on the islands, and the native com munities.
Mr. and Mrs. E. j. H. Colchester- Wemyss, with their three-months old daughter, were in Sydney in June, en route to Guadalcanal, BSI. Mr. Col chester-Wemyss is in the Colonial Service and will take charge of police in BSI, after six years in Jamaica. Mrs. Col chester-'Wemyss said that there was no colour bar in Jamaica and no discrimina tion against women. She had been at tended by the leading gynaecologist in the West Indies who happens to be a native woman.